coffeehousejunkie

4 things to do while waiting for a reply

The silence after sending out resumes and cover letters is frustrating. Here’s four tips from Gerry Corbett for Talent Zoo:

Be patient.
Tap the network.
Grab a hook.
Move on.

(via talentzoo)

5 Ways to Revamp Your Resume

1. Remove Dates from Your Education
2. Focus on Recent Relevant Experience
3. Focus on New Technologies
4. Get Online and Get Connected
5. Give Your Resume a Personal Voice

read more »

(via monster)

4 things to do if you just lost your job

When I received the notice from the CEO that the office was closing for business and the entire staff would be out of work, I was devastated. But there are a lot of resources available to help cope with that stressful situation. Here’s a few tips if you just got laid off:

Network in unlikely places.
Evaluate your financial planner.
Get out of the house and look ready to be hired.
Exercise.

(via msnbc, ‘10 things to do if you have just lost your job’)

1. Being Wrong

2. Failure Doesn’t Suck

3. Fear of Failure

4. Real Change Involves Failure

5. How the Lizard Brain Holds Us Back

6. Six Types of Failure, Only a Few Help You Innovate

7. Roll with the Punches

8. Trial, Error and the God Complex

9. The Fringe Benefits of Failure

(via 99%)

Link: 9 Reasons Why Failure Is Not Fatal

Following the theme of consequences, here’s an interesting long read titled, “The Real Story of Globalization.” Here are some highlights:

“Earthworms… especially the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm… did not exist in North America before 1492.”

“English ships tied up to Virginia docks and took in barrels of rolled-up tobacco leaves… Sailors balanced out the weight by leaving behind their ships’ ballast: stones, gravel and soil. They swapped English dirt for Virginia tobacco.”

“That dirt very likely contained the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm… Before Europeans arrived, the upper Midwest, New England and all of Canada had no earthworms—they had been wiped out in the last Ice Age.”

“In worm-free woodlands, leaves pile up in drifts on the forest floor… When earthworms arrive, they quickly consume the leaf litter, packing the nutrients deep in the soil in the form of castings (worm excrement). Suddenly, the plants can no longer feed themselves; their fine, surface-level root systems are in the wrong place. Wild sarsaparilla, wild oats, Solomon’s seal and a host of understory plants die off; grass-like species such as Pennsylvania sedge take over. Sugar maples almost stop growing, and ash seedlings start to thrive.”

(via wsj)
Link: Globalization circa 1571 and brought to you by earthworms

The purpose of sketching your ideas

“The purpose of sketching your ideas is to help you explore as many ideas as possible in order to trash the bad ones, leaving you with a couple of good ideas that could evolve in a solid design…”

Read the blog post for more details on productivity and creativity. Here’s some techniques offered:

Brainstorming
Idea writing/sketching
Mind Mapping
Gap filling
Boxing gloves

(via First Step in Making Your Ideas Happen – Sketching)

It’s weird when the virtual world intersects the real world. Like when you read a txt from someone & they magically appear I’m front of you.

Deviating slightly off theme here’s something about connections. Here’s an article by Scott Young is a blogger and author of Learn More, Study Less.Here’s some quotes from the article:“K. Anders Ericsson[’s]…. research had a fairly groundbreaking conclusion: practice, not potential, defined our level of ability. Studying everyone from athletes to typists, he found that a person’s potential could commonly be surpassed, with focused effort and practice.”“If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all other things we know.” – AI researcher Marvin Minsky“Compare learning through connections to its opposite: rote memorization. Rote memorization involves learning merely by repeated exposure. Even if it can work, it rarely produces the speed or brilliance we associate with extraordinary mental abilities.”“Many of us learn by rote, simply because nobody ever taught us a better method. It’s difficult to imagine a professional basketball player who was never instructed in how to dribble or shoot. Yet most people are never taught how to learn; instead, we are expected to just pick it up as we play.” “Across a variety of learning theories and mnemonic tricks, one broad generalization stands out: Smart people learn through connections.” ”One way is to create metaphors. A metaphor is a connection between two ideas that aren’t actually related. Describing differential calculus in terms of the speedometer and odometer on a car is an example.”“Good metaphors and analogies aid in understanding because it forces you to really examine the idea. You can’t draw out similarities without understanding how a concept works. Metaphors also aid in memory because they make the ideas more vivid. Vivid imagery also appears to be an almost universally used tactic of brilliant thinkers.”“Another way is to create visual associations. Memory works better storing pictures and places than facts and figures. By translating those abstract details into vivid mental pictures, you’re leveraging your brain’s strengths.”(via 99%)

Link: Training Genius: The Learning Secrets of Polyglots and Savants

Afternoon coffee break/walk featuring a gorgeous Triumph.

The relationships between leaders and teams, and among peers – how the challenge is framed, what managers say to their teams, and how team members support, encourage, and challenge each other.Money buys you people’s time. It should also guarantee you basic professional competence. But you don’t get outstanding creativity by simply offering more money. You get mercenaries. If you want real creativity – the magic ingredient X that sets the product apart – you need to inspire it, by showing them what makes the work fascinating, challenging, meaningful, and fun. And you need to give them freedom to do it their way, rather than micro-managing every step.

(via 99%)

Link: You Can’t Buy Creativity